Select a Zoo

Reviews — Zoos out­side Europe

Auck­land Zoo

His­tory

His­tor­i­cal narrative

The first zoo in Auck­land opened its gates to the pub­lic on 2 Novem­ber 1911 in the Auck­land sub­urb of One­hunga. The Royal Oak Zoo as it was called was estab­lished on about 2.5 hectare of land that entre­pre­neur John James Boyd pur­chased in Feb­ru­ary that year – land that was still totally bare at the time. It was the pur­pose of Boyd to estab­lish Auckland’s first zoo­log­i­cal facil­ity. Such an effort he had accom­plished ear­lier, in 1910, at Upper Aramoho near Wan­ganui, also on New Zealand’s North Island.

Boyd set up a pri­vate menagerie on the acquired grounds, which at its hey­days added up to more than 2000 birds and other ani­mals. The Royal Oak Zoo was a con­stant source of aggra­va­tion, because the local res­i­dents were upset and com­plained about the noise, the smell, the crowds, and the ever-​present threat of hav­ing wild and dan­ger­ous ani­mals on the loose in their neigh­bour­hood. So Boyd’s Zoo became con­tro­ver­sial, with the local One­hunga Bor­ough Coun­cil try­ing to close it, but coun­ter­acted with a suc­cess­ful run for mayor of One­hunga by Boyd him­self. Nev­er­the­less, in the end the local Coun­cil forced Boyd to close the zoo in 1922. In June of 1922 the Auck­land City Coun­cil pur­chased the remain­der of the ani­mals, the six lions, a tiger, a pan­ther, one hyena, two dogs, vul­tures, an emu and sev­eral mon­keys, that Boyd had not already sold to other indi­vid­u­als. And with that group of ani­mals the early seeds of Auck­land Zoo were sown. There is still a Boyd Street in One­hunga today.

Six months after the City Coun­cil bought the ani­mals, on Sat­ur­day 16 Decem­ber 1922, Auck­land Zoo was opened to the pub­lic, at the cur­rent West­ern Springs loca­tion, then a semi rural area about 6km from town hall. The Zoo staff, at its open­ing, com­prised one zookeeper, an assis­tant keeper, a turn­stile atten­dant and a night watch­man, all of them enjoy­ing a seven-​day work­ing week. After only 6 months of con­struc­tion work being done the new Zoo of just over 11 hectares was still an unin­spir­ing place, but this didn’t last long. Soon, many trees were planted and in July 1923 the City Coun­cil decided on devel­op­ing a band­stand, next to bet­ter enclo­sures for polar bear, hip­popota­mus, bison, ele­phant, tiger and other species. Many of these orig­i­nal zoo struc­tures became and still are Zoo land­marks. Also in 1923 the Zoo’s first direc­tor, L.T. Grif­fin, went to Africa to source species from the wild. These trips to other con­ti­nents were part of the aggres­sive Zoo pol­icy of expan­sion over the next few years. But besides these trips, ani­mals could be pur­chased due to dona­tions, such as Jamuna the female Asian ele­phant, Auck­land Zoo’s first star who arrived on June 1923 (see Auck­land Zoo’s first ele­phants).

In these early years the Zoo expanded rapidly, new enclo­sures were built and new species arrived, also because busi­ness­men donated ani­mals which they had acquired on trips abroad. The Zoo’s devel­op­ments were topped by the birth of 25 mam­mals and 62 birds at the zoo in 1928. Fur­ther to this, the Zoo’s mis­sion was extended by the inau­gu­ra­tion of the Auck­land Zoo­log­i­cal Soci­ety on 17 July 1929. Although its main pur­pose was to encour­age sci­en­tific study, it became merely an inter­est and sup­port group for the Zoo.

When in 1935 Lt. Col. E.R. Sawer was approached to report on where the zoo should be headed, the result impressed the City Coun­cil. They appointed Sawer as director/​curator on 1 April 1936, after which he intro­duced the novel notion that zoo­log­i­cal parks should focus on edu­ca­tion, sci­ence and conservation.

In his report Sawer had called for ani­mals to be paired or grouped, which is exactly what he did as well as intro­duc­ing order and coor­di­na­tion. The changes that Sawer made reduced the enor­mously high mor­tal­ity rates, that were nor­mal in zoos at the time, from a whop­ping 35 per­cent in 1930 to about 10 per­cent in 1937. This even went as far as that in 1939 for the first time the num­ber of births sur­passed mor­tal­ity in Zoo mam­mals. Espe­cially, bet­ter ani­mal diets includ­ing the pro­vi­sion of addi­tional vit­a­mins and other sup­ple­ments led to notice­able improve­ments such as bet­ter fer­til­ity and reduced dis­ease rates. Sawer’s good sense of mar­ket­ing and the end of the eco­nomic depres­sion helped the Zoo trans­form from a ter­rain with a group of emp­ty­ing cages to a zoo­log­i­cal park with a ‘full house of exhibits,’ includ­ing the accom­pa­ny­ing exotic species – native fauna was not yet allowed.

Despite lower turn­stile num­bers and low pri­or­ity for ani­mal impor­ta­tion and food sup­ply for the zoo ani­mals dur­ing WWII, the war period was not quite as event­ful as for zoos in coun­tries in west­ern Europe. Nonethe­less, at the end of the war the Zoo was in a state of slight dis­re­pair and deple­tion of stocks. The prob­lem of build­ing up a new ani­mal col­lec­tion was not eas­ily solved after the war. Many zoos all over the world were look­ing to improve their col­lec­tions, and New Zealand’s geo­graph­i­cal iso­la­tion was more or less out of scope for the ani­mal col­lec­tors and exporters. More­over, Auck­land Zoo was sur­passed by Welling­ton Zoo on the list of politician’s favourites, and the Zoo was still not allowed to exhibit native fauna.

In 1948 the dark shadow of war dis­ap­peared with the approval of the con­struc­tion of new facil­i­ties such as an aquar­ium, while in 1949 the Zoo was offi­cially allowed to exhibit kiwi. But the post­war baby boom among New Zealand’s pop­u­la­tion led to a Coun­cil deci­sion to cre­ate more enter­tain­ment activ­i­ties in the Zoo, to sat­isfy the peo­ple with chil­dren. Sawer had always strongly resisted the intro­duc­tion of ani­mal enter­tain­ment as it had noth­ing to do with the Zoo being an edu­ca­tional insti­tu­tion, which it should be in his view. With Sawer retir­ing in 1949 he lost that bat­tle, but he had another clear mes­sage for the Coun­cil – the Zoo needed a full-​time on-​site cura­tor and veterinarian.

The next five years the Council’s com­mit­ment to fur­ther improve the Zoo showed when exist­ing enclo­sures were ren­o­vated and new enclo­sures were built for sun bears, wom­bats, echid­nas, mon­keys, tigers and birds. At the same time progress was made by devel­op­ing basic hos­pi­tal facil­i­ties, a quar­an­tine area, bet­ter equip­ment, and ser­vice areas. Vis­i­tor num­bers increased, because Auck­land cit­i­zens had more money and time to spend and other attrac­tions were closed on Sun­days and pub­lic hol­i­days. This also led to the deci­sion to intro­duce even more enter­tain­ment, espe­cially ani­mal enter­tain­ment. Fol­low­ing the pop­u­lar chim­panzee tea par­ties at Lon­don Zoo, four chimps, who learned the ropes of per­form­ing a good tea party in Lon­don, arrived in Octo­ber 1956 to per­form for the Auck­land com­mu­nity. After eight years of enter­tain­ing the crowds the chimps were relieved from their task when atti­tudes towards treat­ment of ani­mals in cap­tiv­ity were begin­ning to change. Dur­ing these rather pros­per­ous 1950s other enter­tain­ment attrac­tions were intro­duced such as a minia­ture train and the children’s zoo in 1958. A high­light in the ani­mal col­lec­tion could have been the birth of twin polar bears in June 1957. Unfor­tu­nately, one of the cubs died shortly after birth, while the other one drowned when 11 weeks old dur­ing the swim­ming lessons given by its mother. In the years between 1923 and 1995 Auck­land Zoo exhib­ited sev­eral polar bears, and although some lived to an old age, they all devel­oped skin lesions. Addi­tion­ally, they had a bad track record regard­ing breed­ing polar bears, because only one cub was ever raised to adult­hood at the Zoo.

The 1960s started with a new Zoo direc­tor (super­vi­sor), Derek Wood, who was trained in the United King­dom at Chester Zoo and he brought with him the first giraffe ever to set foot on New Zealand, John from Lon­don Zoo. As said the chim­panzee tea par­ties were ter­mi­nated in 1964, in May to be exact, but the tea-​party chimps remained at the zoo until their deaths. The tea-​party chimps dis­played abnor­mal, anti-​social behav­iour for the rest of their lives. Hence, none of them – except two chimps born in the Zoo that never par­tic­i­pated in the tea-​parties – could be intro­duced into the nat­ural social group of chim­panzees that was estab­lished later in the 1980s. When in 2004 was decided to focus on just one great ape species — the orang­utan, and the troop of six chim­panzees were relo­cated to Hamil­ton Zoo, Bob­bie and Janie were the two sur­viv­ing ‘tea party’ chimps that remained in Auck­land. Bob­bie died in Novem­ber 2004 and Janie passed away in Octo­ber 2013 at the age of 60, hav­ing lived at Auck­land Zoo for 57 years.

Build­ing activ­i­ties con­tin­ued in the 1960s and besides other con­sid­er­able improve­ments a noc­tur­nal house for New Zealand’s national icon, the kiwi, was erected. This period also saw the arrival of many new ani­mals, includ­ing a female ele­phant from Sin­ga­pore as the long-​awaited com­pan­ion for Jamuna the Asian ele­phant, to suc­ceed the bull that was killed in 1936. But star ele­phant Jamuna died in Sep­tem­ber 1965, and replaced by Ma Schwe, a female Asian ele­phant, in 1968. Other new ani­mals arrived, such as a female giraffe, a pair of Ben­gal tigers, two young polar bears, a giant anteater, two capuchin mon­keys, white-​tailed deer, 23 keas and four spi­der mon­keys. The giraffe herd and spi­der mon­key troop at the zoo today are descen­dants of these first imports.

Despite old enclo­sures being demol­ished and replaced by new ones the Zoo still suf­fered from the ever­last­ing prob­lems with flood­ing. As a mat­ter of fact, even in June 1977 it was still pos­si­ble that a hippo floated out of its enclo­sure into West­ern Springs dur­ing a flood. So, it should be no sur­prise that already in the 1960s the first seri­ous calls for expan­sion arose and a major over­haul began. This led even­tu­ally to a long-​term plan of the Coun­cil to mod­ernise the Zoo with nat­ural, moated, bar-​less enclo­sures and an exten­sion of the grounds into West­ern Springs park with approx­i­mately 5 hectares in 1973. For starters they closed the orig­i­nal entrance on Old Mill Road and opened a new entrance on Motions Road.

The 1970s saw enor­mous improve­ments, includ­ing those of the vet­eri­nary sup­port, the stop­ping of pub­lic feed­ing, devel­op­ment of more nat­u­ral­is­tic enclo­sures and intro­duc­tion of behav­ioural enrich­ments. Sub­se­quently the breed­ing suc­cesses increased. Ani­mals deemed unsuit­able for Auck­land Zoo were trans­ferred or phased out of the zoo’s col­lec­tion, although it took another 20 years before the last polar bear died. Dur­ing the late 1970s the Zoo was one enor­mous con­struc­tion site with a new sou­venir shop, cafe­te­ria and enclo­sures for the giraffe, zebra and ante­lope to be com­pleted. The over­all pro­fes­sion­al­ism increased with the employ­ment of a full-​time edu­ca­tion offi­cer as of 1975, and in 1976 the first com­pre­hen­sive course for zookeep­ers started at the Auck­land Tech­ni­cal Insti­tute. Besides those devel­op­ments new species arrived as well. Peo­ple could come and watch white rhi­noc­er­oses and tamarins in the 1970s.

New enclo­sure devel­op­ment con­tin­ued in the 1980s with a new hip­popota­mus exhibit and a new moated and bar-​less orang­utan exhibit opened, the lat­ter is cur­rently part of the Orang­utan Trail. But prob­a­bly the high­light of those days was the three-​month stay of a pair of giant pan­das. These pan­das were part of an offer that the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment made to the Aus­tralian Prime Min­is­ter for Australia’s bi-​centennial cel­e­bra­tions. A three-​month stay in Mel­bourne Zoo and a three-​month stay in Taronga Zoo, Syd­ney, was organ­ised, and Auck­land Zoo quickly inves­ti­gated the fea­si­bil­ity of a third stop in Auck­land. Well, these became a pop­u­lar three months in 1988, and all rev­enues were donated to giant panda research and con­ser­va­tion in China as well as to con­ser­va­tion projects in New Zealand. Not sure if this was the trig­ger that vis­i­tor num­bers rose again after a decline in the early 80s when com­pe­ti­tion appeared due to the open­ing of the Rainbow’s End theme park and Kelly Tarlton’s Under­wa­ter World in the Auck­land area, but the giant pan­das alone were seen by about 300,000 visitors.

In 1989, Auck­land as a city expanded when 11 ter­ri­to­r­ial author­i­ties merged into the large city of Auck­land. A new Zoo Enter­prise Board was estab­lished which became the legal entity respon­si­ble for the Zoo.

After WWII there had been a con­tin­u­ous flow of con­struc­tion work ongo­ing at Auck­land Zoo, either new con­struc­tion or refur­bish­ment. But this last decade of the twen­ti­eth cen­tury was a time of extreme change at Auck­land Zoo, with almost half the zoo’s enclo­sures being ren­o­vated or replaced. As of 1990 the design focussed more and more on cre­at­ing nat­u­ral­is­tic habi­tats, which shows for instance in the Ele­phant Clear­ing. The con­struc­tion of this exhibit began in 1990 and deliv­ered a large moated out­door enclo­sure with a mod­ern ele­phant house and pool, in which the pachy­derms could com­pletely sub­merge. Another exam­ple of this type of exhibit design that is part of the 1991 Zoo devel­op­ment plan, is Pride­lands. This large area, includ­ing the new savan­nah exhibit for giraffe, spring­bok, zebra and ostrich, flamingo, the rhino exhibit and Lion Hill, opened in 1997. For the lions it meant that they could leave the his­toric lion pit. Soon the area was extended with the Hippo River, a river­ine for­est area that encom­passed a new hip­popota­mus exhibit and an enclo­sure for chacma baboons (Papio ursi­nus). A huge improve­ment for the baboons that had pre­vi­ously lived in a cage dat­ing from 1926.

Despite the new exhibit and the Zoo’s good track record for breed­ing hip­pos a deci­sion was made to phase out hip­popota­muses (stop breed­ing). Due to the aver­age life expectancy of the hip­popota­mus of 45 – 50 years, how­ever, it would take a long time before all the hip­pos would die of old age they reck­oned. The last two remain­ing hip­pos died in 2016, in March and August to be exact. Other species had to be phased out as well, it was decided. This included the wom­bat, puma, jaguar and leop­ard. While the genetic base for other species was strength­ened, for instance by import­ing three south­ern white rhi­noc­er­oses from South Africa. One of the two female rhi­nos appeared 10 months preg­nant on arrival from South Africa, so, in effect they had imported four specimens.

The chacma baboons were phased out start­ing around 2009 when the Zoo’s man­age­ment decided to focus on the hamadryas baboon species, which is housed in zoos through­out the region.

Besides many smaller devel­op­ments such as the new ring-​tailed lemur enclo­sure and the new Wal­laby walk-​through, two other land­mark exhibits were built in the 1990s, the New Zealand Aviary (1992) and The Rain­for­est (1996), a forested area that pro­vides a nat­ural envi­ron­ment for dif­fer­ent pri­mate species, includ­ing cotton-​top tamarins. The New Zealand Aviary is a free-​flight aviary and bush walk fea­tur­ing NZ native species.

Another major devel­op­ment at the turn of the cen­tury was the Sea Lion and Pen­guin Shores, opened in 2001, which replaced the old Wal­laby walk-​through and small mam­mal enclo­sures. This exhibit was designed to recre­ate a New Zealand Coastal ecosys­tem fea­tur­ing a beach and a large pool.

Then a period of rel­a­tive calm started with regard to con­struc­tion work, except for the build­ing of the New Zealand Cen­tre for Con­ser­va­tion Med­i­cine (NZCCM) in 2007. But in 2010 with the open­ing of the Trop­ics exhibit, focussing on the hot and trop­i­cal Amer­i­cas, things were fired up again. The New Zealand Aviary, orig­i­nat­ing from 1992, was rede­vel­oped into ‘The For­est’ in 2011 and to be included in Te Wao Nui – the Zoo’s largest ever project devel­op­ment which is ded­i­cated to New Zealand’s unique fauna and flora. Te Wao Nui (The Liv­ing Realm) opened on 11 Sep­tem­ber 2011 and cov­ers about 4 hectare of the zoo grounds and com­prises 6 habi­tats: The Coast, The Islands, The Wet­lands, The Night, The For­est and The High Coun­try. Another exist­ing exhibit that was incor­po­rated in Te Wao Nui is the Sea Lion and Pen­guin Shores renamed in the process as The Coast.

Then in May 2014, a new giraffe house was com­pleted and in 2016 Auck­land Zoo started their trans­for­ma­tion into a 21st-​century-​zoo. In Decem­ber 2016 ‘Strangely Beau­ti­ful Aus­tralia’ opened, which draws on the Murray-​Darling region of South­east Aus­tralia. The area is home to giant stick insects, East­ern snake-​necked tur­tles, red­back spi­ders, lace mon­i­tors and vibrant Aus­tralian birds who join the Tas­man­ian dev­ils, red-​necked wal­la­bies and emu to cre­ate a bio-​diverse Aus­tralian sec­tion. The devel­op­ment is the sec­ond part of the Zoo’s $120 mil­lion 10-​year-​development plan ‘Nearer to Nature’ 2016 – 2026.

Con­ser­va­tion

Auck­land Zoo became involved in many con­ser­va­tion projects over the years, but they made the head­lines when they achieved a ‘world’s first’ in 1992 when ‘Hoki’, a kakapo – a native rare flight­less par­rot, was suc­cess­fully arti­fi­cially hatched and reared. It was returned in the wild to Maud Island, one of New Zealand’s off­shore islands (see Kakapo recov­ery).

In addi­tion to the Zoo’s exist­ing con­ser­va­tion efforts the Auck­land Zoo Con­ser­va­tion Fund was estab­lished in 2000 to sup­port the con­ser­va­tion of endan­gered ani­mals in the wild in both New Zealand and overseas.

Auck­land Zoo vet­eri­nar­i­ans became renown for their knowl­edge, hands-​on expe­ri­ence, and con­tri­bu­tion to con­ser­va­tion projects includ­ing kakapo recov­ery. Hence, they were appointed sup­plier of vet­eri­nary ser­vices for the Depart­ment of Conservation’s Kakapo Recov­ery Pro­gramme in 2006.

In 2007 the New Zealand Cen­tre for Con­ser­va­tion Med­i­cine (NZCCM) opened — the first national cen­tre for con­ser­va­tion med­i­cine in the world — replac­ing the Zoo’s old vet­eri­nary centre.

The Zoo not only con­tributed to con­ser­va­tion of New Zealand’s indige­nous species, because in 2008 three Suma­tran tiger cubs were bred as part of the inter­na­tional cap­tive breed­ing pro­gramme for this Crit­i­cally Endan­gered tiger subspecies.

As part of the grand tour of kakapo Sirocco (see Kakapo recov­ery) Auck­land Zoo hosted this ambas­sador for New Zealand con­ser­va­tion dur­ing Con­ser­va­tion Week 2009, in part­ner­ship with the Depart­ment of Con­ser­va­tion. Due to this event the Zoo became the first zoo ever to host a kakapo. Also in 2009 the Zoo released 12 North­ern tuatara (descen­dants of the rare Cuvier Island pop­u­la­tion) onto Cuvier Island, boost­ing this island’s known tuatara pop­u­la­tion by over a third.

A mile­stone is achieved when 200 North Island brown kiwi chicks are suc­cess­fully incu­bated, hatched, reared and released as part of the Oper­a­tion Nest Egg (O.N.E.) pro­gramme (2010). O.N.E. is a Depart­ment of Con­ser­va­tion kiwi recov­ery pro­gramme where kiwi eggs are taken from the wild, hatched at the Zoo, and the chicks are kept on predator-​free islands until they are grown, before releas­ing them into the wild.

Hav­ing suc­cess­fully bred and raised sev­eral endan­gered species in the twen­ti­eth cen­tury, the start of the next cen­tury showed a con­tin­u­a­tion of such high­lights that extended the Zoo’s breed­ing track record. In June 2000 the Zoo’s first white rhino calf was born, which was the first female white rhino born in New Zealand. The first ever suc­cess­fully hatched greater flamingo chicks in Aus­trala­sia, marked a world’s first for Auck­land Zoo in Jan­u­ary 2014. It was the first time a zoo had suc­cess­fully bred from an entirely hand-​reared flock in the world. Another world’s first was the suc­cess­ful breed­ing and (partly hand-)rearing in cap­tiv­ity of twin lesser short-​tailed bats in 2014, a species endemic to New Zealand. Also in 2014 one female and three male Tas­man­ian dev­ils move to Auck­land Zoo from Australia’s Healesville Zoo to be part of an insur­ance pop­u­la­tion for this species and to raise aware­ness about the plight of this Endan­gered mar­su­pial. Even more impres­sive was the first ever breed­ing and rear­ing suc­cess of the world’s most evo­lu­tion­ar­ily dis­tinct and glob­ally endan­gered (EDGE) amphib­ian, New Zealand’s rare and unique Archey’s frog, a ‘liv­ing fos­sil’. This boosted the Zoo’s Archey’s frog pop­u­la­tion to 25 in Feb­ru­ary 2016.

Unfor­tu­nately, not every­thing the Zoo accom­plished received pos­i­tive appraisal. When in 2015 and 2016 Auck­land Zoo acquired two Asian ele­phants from Sri Lanka to enlarge the Zoo’s ele­phant num­ber, it was reported by Born Free that both ele­phants were res­i­dents of a con­tro­ver­sial Government-​owned facil­ity in Sri Lanka. Con­di­tions at Pin­newala Ele­phant ‘Orphan­age’ raised con­cern with the Born Free Foun­da­tion, as did the prac­tice of export­ing ele­phants from Sri Lanka to cap­tive facil­i­ties such as zoos over­seas. They firmly believe that such export to New Zealand will result in lit­tle or no con­ser­va­tion ben­e­fit to wild elephants.

Auck­land Zoo ‘s first elephants

Jamuna, thought to be six years old, came from the Zoo­log­i­cal Gar­dens of Cal­cutta, accom­pa­nied by her mahout Ater Ali. Her pur­chase was funded by a dona­tion from busi­ness­man, Auck­land City Coun­sel­lor and first life mem­ber of the Auck­land Zoo­log­i­cal Soci­ety: John Court.

As the Ele­phant House was not yet com­pleted when Jamuna arrived in June 1923, she was first housed in the coun­cil works depot. This proved to be less than ideal with Jamuna break­ing out when left alone one evening and caus­ing quite a bit of destruc­tion. As Jamuna had been famil­iar with giv­ing rides to chil­dren in Cal­cutta, she started giv­ing rides to chil­dren at the Auck­land Zoo on 10th Novem­ber 1923 – for free. This was stip­u­lated by John Court – rides on Jamuna would be free for the first year.

In 1930, fol­low­ing an offer from the Hobart City Coun­cil, a bull ele­phant, Rajah, was pur­chased as a com­pan­ion for Jamuna. Rajah had spent his early days at Hobart Zoo (Beau­maris Zoo) where he was used for giv­ing rides to chil­dren from 1927 until 1930 when eco­nomic fac­tors forced Hobart City Coun­cil to sell Rajah. He had prob­a­bly been taken from the wild in Burma and has been exhib­ited with a group of ele­phants at the 1924 British Empire Exhi­bi­tion at Wem­b­ley, Lon­don, before being swapped for a Ben­nets Wal­laby and a Tas­man­ian tiger arriv­ing in 1925 and trav­el­ling to Beau­maris Zoo in Hobart.

Some said that Rajah quickly proved to be of a highly dis­agree­able dis­po­si­tion, was unable to be used for ele­phant rides, and after a string of inci­dents was finally shot by his keeper in 1936. But this seems to be highly unlikely, as he did a good job car­ry­ing chil­dren on his back in Hobart Zoo. In fact there is very lit­tle men­tion of Rajah and any issues in the zoo archives until the appoint­ment of Col. Sawer who decided that Rajah should be destroyed. It had noth­ing to do with tem­per rather that Col. Sawer con­sid­ered the ele­phant to be a lia­bil­ity. He asked per­mis­sion to have Rajah destroyed and the bones and skin offered to the Auck­land War Memo­r­ial Museum. it was granted with a note attached “No publicity”.

Jamuna’s mahout Ater Ali had a some­what trou­bled rela­tion­ship with his employ­ers. There were dis­putes over pay and work­ing con­di­tions, which led to Ali leav­ing the Zoo in 1925. Unfor­tu­nately for Ali there were issues with his res­i­dency per­mits as well. As a result of these, being an over­stayer, Ali was ordered to leave New Zealand.

Jamuna remained highly pop­u­lar with chil­dren and other vis­i­tors. Trag­i­cally, in 1954, 65-​year-​old keeper Frank Lane died when the Jamuna swung her trunk, knock­ing him into a wall. The coro­ner judged the death to have been acci­den­tal rather than from a delib­er­ate attack. Hence, Jamuna was not sen­tenced to death, but was allowed to con­tinue giv­ing rides to suc­ces­sive gen­er­a­tions of children.

Jamuna passed away on 2 Sep­tem­ber 1965, and her 42 years of ser­vice was memo­ri­alised in a plaque placed on the wall of the ele­phant house. Jamuna’s influ­ence is still seen today as the area out­side the Old Ele­phant House func­tion cen­tre is now named Jamuna Plaza after her. The tra­di­tion of giv­ing ele­phant rides died with Jamuna, because zoo prac­tice had changed much over the years. As a replace­ment for Jamuna, in 1968 Ma Schwe was donated to the zoo by the son of John Court, the one who made it pos­si­ble for the Zoo to acquire Jamuna. Ma Schwe died in 1982 of acute heart failure.

Visit(s)

11.03.2016

After a refresh­ing morn­ing rain I arrive at the Zoo entrance when the sky is clear­ing and the tem­per­a­ture reaches a nice 25°C.

I decide to go left after I entered the Zoo grounds and leave the giraffe, zebra and ostrich be in their impres­sively large Pride­lands area, in par­tic­u­lar because the pas­sage­way is closed due to ongo­ing con­struc­tion work. There­fore I plan to approach this area from the other direc­tion, prob­a­bly just after lunch. On the left the first enclo­sure houses Asian small-​clawed otter in a mul­ti­level rocky envi­ron­ment with a creek that forms small ponds on var­i­ous lev­els. The small water­fall, the bam­boo shrubs and a few trees com­plete the imi­ta­tion of the nat­ural sur­round­ings of the small­est of the otter sub­fam­ily (Lutrinae).

In the next-​door exhibit, the red panda occupy not the obvi­ous cir­cu­lar exhibit as you see in so many zoos nowa­days, but a more elon­gated enclo­sure this time. A small stream partly sur­rounds an area with large shrubs and shel­ters where the three red pan­das can sleep and hide, while a high wall pre­vents too much expo­sure of these Endan­gered red furry car­ni­vores whose diet con­sists of 98% bamboo.

Sig­nage and infor­ma­tion

The infor­ma­tion pan­els do not com­prise a lot of graph­ics to explain species’ habi­tat, feed­ing behav­iour or other pecu­liar­i­ties. Only a few con­tain geo­graph­i­cal depic­tion of the species’ ori­gin. The con­ser­va­tion sta­tus is not always men­tioned, and when it is, the source is obvi­ously the IUCN Red List of Threat­ened Species™, but not stated as such.

Apart from the pan­els at the enclo­sures, sev­eral other types of info pan­els can be found when tour­ing the premises. There are pan­els that besides over­all con­ser­va­tion infor­ma­tion give tips on what you can do your­self to reduce threats to nature.

Auck­land Zoo has three Suma­tran tigers that swap between enclo­sures so they can smell where the oth­ers have been mark­ing, eat­ing and sleep­ing. There are two enclo­sures; one of them is a deep pit with a really large and high rear wall. Both enclo­sures have jungle-​like fea­tures with ponds and lots of veg­e­ta­tion. In one of them there’s a scratch­ing pole – just as they sell them for domes­tic cats, only larger and more sturdy and solid I assume.

Instead of con­tin­u­ing towards the Aussie Walk­a­bout I retrace my steps from the Tiger Ter­ri­tory to the otters and move on along Darwin’s eatery on the upward path to another combo of red panda and Asian small-​clawed otters, who enjoy a healthy meal of fish-​heads (see video).

Then I reach The Coast, which is one of the six habi­tats of Te Wao Nui (The Liv­ing Realm) that cov­ers about 4 hectare of the zoo grounds. It’s a total con­cept that takes the vis­i­tor on a jour­ney along New Zealand’s vari­ety of fauna and flora. The art­works under­pin the sto­ry­line and con­tribute to the expe­ri­ence. The jour­ney starts at The Coast and winds through a num­ber of enclo­sures includ­ing The Islands, The High Coun­try, The For­est, The Night and The Wet­lands, that all fea­ture indige­nous species.

The Coast was designed to recre­ate a New Zealand Coastal ecosys­tem fea­tur­ing a beach and a large pool for Cal­i­for­nia sea lion and native Fur Seal (kekeno in Maori lan­guage; Arc­to­cephalus forsteri), fea­tur­ing an enor­mous under­wa­ter view­ing win­dow, and an aviary for lit­tle blue pen­guins and other native shore­birds. The Cal­i­for­nia sea lions on dis­play were born at Auck­land Zoo in the 1990s and will be taken care of for the rest of their lives. And although not found in New Zealand waters, they face many of the same threats as their New Zealand cousins and there­fore are as good an ambas­sador for bio­di­ver­sity and ecosys­tem health as a native marine mam­mal. See one such ambas­sador fly through the fil­tered salt water tank with a cir­cu­lat­ing supply:

The walk-​through aviary for lit­tle blue pen­guins (Eudyp­tula minor), the world’s small­est pen­guins, com­prises other shore­birds as well. That explains the wire mesh roof – to keep the spot­ted shag (Pha­lacro­co­rax punc­ta­tus) inside for instance. Austin, as the spot­ted shag of the Zoo is called, seems to be quite a char­ac­ter accord­ing the Zoo’s web­site, but I don’t spot him nor any other shore­bird – if any.

I post­pone my visit to the other New Zealand habi­tats of Te Wao Nui and turn right when I leave The Coast to go and have a look at the Africa sec­tion. This con­sists of the Hippo River and Pride­lands. The name hippo river is easy to under­stand when I see an enclo­sure with two hip­popota­muses in a pool from where a rivulet flows along other enclo­sures, pro­vid­ing an ade­quate envi­ron­ment for greater flamin­gos – sup­pos­edly the only flock in Aus­trala­sia. But the name Pride­lands doesn’t ring a bell, at least with me. It is a savan­nah like area that pro­vides a home for chee­tah, white rhi­noc­eros, spring­bok, giraffe, zebra and ostrich. Pride­lands is tem­porar­ily closed due to the recon­struc­tion that is about to be com­pleted at Easter. So, also the approach from this direc­tion doesn’t deliver any views on the sec­tion where the giraffe, zebra and ostrich live together.

But first back to the entrance of the Africa sec­tion. That is the place where you can see the ser­val, while on the other side of the foot­path two hip­popota­muses enjoy their rather large pool that allows them to sub­merge and swim around. Despite quite good breed­ing results it has been decided to phase out the hip­pos. So for how long these pachy­derms can be seen here in Auck­land is uncer­tain (see also the video). The hippo pool can be con­sid­ered either the begin­ning or the end of a rivulet which I cross sev­eral times pro­gress­ing through ‘Africa’.

Before I reach the Asian ele­phant enclo­sure and the nearby Water­ing Hole where I have a quick lunch, I first pass the hamadryas baboon exhibit with a ‘baboon hill’ instead of the ‘baboon rock’ you’ll see in many other zoos. The grassy pad­dock and the small hill would suit many other ground-​dwelling species, also pri­mates such as geladas, also called bleed­ing heart mon­keys. The lat­ter you see less often in zoos, but both species are con­sid­ered Least Con­cern accord­ing the IUCN Red List. This means that even when they switch to keep­ing geladas (as they have done years ear­lier from chacma baboons to hamadryas baboons) the pri­mates are there just to rep­re­sent the order of pri­mates in the Africa sec­tion instead of pro­vid­ing a real con­tri­bu­tion to ex-​situ species con­ser­va­tion. Because then they should have cho­sen a more endan­gered species, in my opin­ion. The chee­tahs inhabit a not so large enclo­sure with indeed a savannah-​like look. The slightly undu­lat­ing grounds pro­vides plenty of shel­ters but not a good observation/​resting post. Although there’s a pole with two high level plat­forms I doubt if a chee­tah will be able to reach those plat­forms, because the pole has a smooth metal sur­face and the first plat­form is at least 5 metres above ground.

The two female Asian ele­phants, of which one is a res­i­dent since 1990, have their enclo­sures sit­u­ated in the cor­ner of the grounds tucked away as a sur­prise behind the Africa sec­tion. The out­door exhibit is spa­cious and includes a nice pool with a large can­vas as sun­shade close to one of the view­ing ter­races. More dis­tant from the pub­lic there’s a large pad­dock where I see both the ele­phants wan­der, enjoy­ing the peace and quiet atmos­phere over there. The ele­phant house is noth­ing more than a sta­ble that pro­vides nei­ther suf­fi­cient space for the pachy­derms nor any enrich­ment. Vis­i­tors are not allowed to enter the ele­phant house, but have view­ing access via a large win­dow. It’s no won­der that the lat­est Zoo devel­op­ment plan ‘Nearer to Nature, 2016 – 2026’ antic­i­pates improve­ment of these indoor facilities.

From the local Water­ing Hole, as the café is called, where I revi­talise myself I cross again the hippo rivulet and arrive at the enclo­sure that houses two female lionesses. It is a vegetation-​rich exhibit with a hill that can be con­sid­ered a high level obser­va­tion post, while it cre­ates a shel­tered rear side where the lionesses can eas­ily hide from the pub­lic. The water-​filled moat on the visitor’s side makes this another good exam­ple of the Hagen­beck prin­ci­ple of enclo­sure design – bar-​less and nat­u­ral­is­tic. Two lionesses do not form a pride, and to be hon­est the size of the enclo­sure doesn’t give me the idea that more than two can be hosted, but for the animal’s sake a more robust social struc­ture includ­ing a male would per­haps be bet­ter. On the other hand, the enrich­ment and excite­ment pro­vided by the mixed-​species exhibit with white rhino and espe­cially spring­bok within sight of the lionesses makes it a bit more nat­ural again. The white rhino and spring­bok are the last species of the Pride­lands I can observe, because the foot­path ter­mi­nates at this point due to the con­struc­tion work that will be ready in a few weeks time. A good moment for me to return to the native fauna and flora sec­tion, Te Wao Nui.

New Zealan­ders are or should be proud of their native species, that all have basi­cally only a lim­ited geo­graph­i­cal dis­tri­b­u­tion and there­fore are eas­ily prone to a reduc­tion of their pop­u­la­tion size. Hav­ing such species on dis­play and telling the vis­i­tors about the plight of some of them and the neces­sity of con­ser­va­tion can­not be applauded enough. They did a mar­vel­lous job in achiev­ing this here at Auck­land Zoo. The sev­eral walk-​through exhibits, includ­ing a never seen before [by me] kea walk-​through aviary, with infor­ma­tion pan­els makes this place a won­der­ful edu­ca­tional facil­ity. And it’s not just about the well-​known and inevitable NZ species such as the kiwi, kea or tuatara. The For­est for instance is an absolute great enclo­sure sit­u­ated on a densely forested hill­side with birds such as the tui, New Zealand pigeon (kereru or kukupa in Maori lan­guage), North Island kaka and Reischek’s para­keet (Cyanoram­phus hochstet­teri) which is nest­ing under­ground in bur­rows. The noc­tur­nal house called The Night with brown kiwi (Apteryx man­telli) on dis­play is more or less part of The Wet­lands where other habi­tat spe­cific species can be found. The Zoo takes part in the Depart­ment of Conservation’s kiwi recov­ery pro­gramme called Oper­a­tion Nest Egg (O.N.E). This pro­gramme involves tak­ing kiwi eggs from the wild, hatch­ing them at the Zoo, and then keep­ing them on predator-​free islands until they are grown, before releas­ing them into the wild (more on kiwi con­ser­va­tion). Other bird species to be spot­ted in Te Wao Nui are the bell­bird (kori­mako), blue duck (whio), takahe, and red-​crowned para­keet (kakariki).

Hav­ing learnt quite a lot about New Zealand’s native fauna I con­tinue to the Orang­utan Trail that guides me along two grassy out­door enclo­sures with arti­fi­cial enrich­ment fea­tures such a wooden climb­ing frames, plat­forms, ropes and hard to reach feed­ing boxes. Three of the six Bornean orang­utans are cur­rently on tour to zoos in the United States of Amer­ica (L.A. Zoo and Busch Gar­dens in Florida) as part of an inter­na­tional breed­ing pro­gramme sched­ule. Con­sid­er­ing the very small indoor enclo­sure the three orang­utans that are left will not com­plain I sup­pose. But rede­vel­op­ment of the orang­utan enclo­sures is sched­uled as part of the ‘Nearer to Nature’ plan. Dur­ing the sec­ond phase (2018−2020) of this 10-​year plan they will develop Wild Asia, bring­ing together their species of the south-​east Asian rain­forests: small-​clawed otter, sia­mang, tiger and Bornean orang­utan. Those species are now some­what scat­tered over the premises. I guess they will give the red panda a place as well in this new Asia sec­tion. Wild Asia will cre­ate more immer­sion exhibits – that is the cur­rent state-​of-​the-​art for zoo enclo­sures – to pro­vide the vis­i­tor with a bet­ter experience.

From the orang­utan to the species of South Amer­ica I pass along the ring-​tailed lemurs that have a small patch of land at their dis­posal with plenty of veg­e­ta­tion and some addi­tional enrich­ment. In the South Amer­ica sec­tion they have macaws, Gala­pa­gos tor­toises, cotton-​top tamarins, pygmy mar­mosets and quite a few other trop­i­cal species on dis­play, but the absolute high­light here is the ele­vated wooden board­walk that guides you through a forested area. There I hear on my right Boli­vian squir­rel mon­keys, but due to the dense veg­e­ta­tion I have trou­ble spot­ting them. On the left golden lion tamarin share their nice bushy, bar-​less and open top out­door exhibit with agouti. A bit fur­ther along the board­walk I have an excel­lent view on the mar­vel­lous island for the black-​handed spi­der mon­keys (Ate­les geof­froyi) from one of the shel­ters near the board­walk. The spi­der mon­keys seem to enjoy their moated exhibit as they are explor­ing the many trees and shrubs to their heart’s con­tent (see video). Com­pared to this, the sia­mang enclo­sure on the other side of the board­walk is less impres­sive. It is sur­rounded on all sides, includ­ing the roof, by wire mesh net­ting and for this gib­bon species that lives in the for­est canopy in the wild the height of the enclo­sure will be disappointing.

The final sec­tion of my visit is the one for species of New Zealand’s big neigh­bour, Aus­tralia. The Aussie Walk­a­bout is all walk-​through, with emu and wal­laby in a mixed-​species exhibit and rain­bow lori­keet in their own aviary. In New Zealand the rain­bow lori­keet are con­sid­ered a pest, because they com­pete with native NZ bird species for food and habi­tat. Quite under­stand­able, the Tas­man­ian dev­ils, with their rep­u­ta­tion of being fierce and vio­lent, are not to be vis­ited in their enclo­sure. These Crit­i­cally Endan­gered ani­mals have sev­eral nice out­door exhibits at their dis­posal though. I’ve seen quite a few of them as road kill in Tas­ma­nia, but luck­ily the one I see lying here is well-​protected and fast asleep.

Auck­land Zoo has gone to great lengths to present New Zealand’s native fauna and flora in the best way. They under­stand the real value of zoo­log­i­cal facil­ity and appre­ci­a­tion can­not be big enough for their approach. The New Zealand sec­tion fits in nicely with the group­ing of the ani­mal col­lec­tion, which is basi­cally geo­graph­i­cally. Of course at a place like Auck­land Zoo dat­ing back from the early twen­ti­eth cen­tury you’ll still find the odd one out: the Asian ele­phants behind the Africa sec­tion; the sia­mang near the South Amer­i­can pri­mate species; and the ring-​tailed lemur, meerkat and por­cu­pine sep­a­rated from the huge Africa sec­tion by sev­eral Asia enclo­sures. But as con­struc­tion work and improve­ment are both inex­tri­ca­bly linked with Auck­land Zoo, these minor flaws in the group­ing of their col­lec­tion will be solved. If not with the cur­rent devel­op­ment plan, than with the next one.

Video

The otters have fish for lunch – big fish!

All otters love fish, and so do the Asian small-​clawed otters at Auck­land Zoo, even if it’s only the head – as long as it is a big and fishy of course!

Black-​handed spi­der mon­keys enjoy­ing themselves

The black-​handed spi­der mon­keys (Ate­les geof­froyi) have access to a won­der­ful island which they can explore to their heart’s con­tent. The island has its lim­its of course. It’s never big enough con­sid­er­ing the orig­i­nal forested habi­tat of the mon­keys, but the trees and other veg­e­ta­tion allow the mon­keys to express nat­ural behav­iour, as you can see.

Feed­ing of the Hamadryas baboons

See how the baboons go straight for the food that was ‘hid­den’ from them by the zookeep­ers. It’s obvi­ous they know all the places the keep­ers use to con­ceal the food. Nev­er­the­less, they have to work for it as in the wild – only not as hard.

Feed­ing time for the hippos

How do you get hip­pos out of the water? Promise them food, and they do what most ani­mals do – they lis­ten – one comes and the other fol­lows suit.

The hip­pos were being phased out of the Zoo’s ani­mal col­lec­tion and later that year – the video being recorded in March 2016 – both hip­pos died.

More info

Kiwi con­ser­va­tion

The fight to save the kiwi

New Zealand’s for­est used to be home to mil­lions of kiwi. Now there are only 68,000 left.

Natalie Clark, kiwi keeper at Auck­land Zoo, and Ray Wal­ters, for­mer ranger at Tir­i­tiri Matangi island, have been fight­ing to save their national bird from extinc­tion in the wild.

Should We Kill One Species to Save Another?

Is it fair to kill inva­sive species which humans have intro­duced? When peo­ple move around the world, many of their favourite – and not so favourite — ani­mals tag along for the ride. From cane toads through to rats, cats and cray­fish, so-​called ‘inva­sive species’ can destroy ecosys­tems and kill off native wildlife. Crowd­Science lis­tener Jude Kirkham wants to know if erad­i­cat­ing these invaders is justified.

Make New Zealand preda­tor free by 2050

One coun­try deter­mined to do some­thing about inva­sive species is New Zealand, where rats, stoats and pos­sums are caus­ing irrepara­ble dam­age to the country’s unique bird life. If noth­ing is done, the iconic Kiwi could be extinct within 50 years. The gov­ern­ment and vol­un­teer groups across the coun­try have responded with a plan to erad­i­cate preda­tory mam­mals from New Zealand by 2050. But is all the time, energy and money needed to do this really jus­ti­fied? And is it morally right to kill off an ani­mal species that humans intro­duced in the first place?

Kakapo recov­ery

The kakapo (Strigops habrop­tila) is a large flight­less par­rot native to New Zealand. This ground-​dwelling bird lived on the iso­lated islands of New Zealand for thou­sands of years and evolved into a very remark­able bird. Human coloni­sa­tion, how­ever, together with the preda­tors which the set­tlers intro­duced drove the kakapo towards extinc­tion. The kakapo were hunted for its plumage and meat by Poly­ne­sian set­tlers, while Euro­pean set­tlers cleared the land and destroyed its habi­tat too. The par­rot had never seen a stoat, rat, cat or dog, and more impor­tantly it had no abil­ity to fly away when they were hunted as prey by those inva­sive preda­tor species. By 1995, only 51 known kakapo sur­vived on just a hand­ful of small island sanctuaries.

Today, thanks to a kakapo recov­ery plan, the world (= NZ) pop­u­la­tion of kakapo com­prises 154 indi­vid­u­als (cen­sus of 2017). With a com­pre­hen­sive Kakapo Recov­ery Pro­gramme under­way, the kakapo seems on its first ten­ta­tive steps to recov­ery. Still, it is clas­si­fied as Crit­i­cally Endan­gered accord­ing the IUCN Red List of Threat­ened Species™.

The kakapo is not just a large and flight­less par­rot, it is the world’s heav­i­est as well, which makes tree climb­ing a tricky thing for the kakapo:

Every known liv­ing kakapo, except some young chicks, has been given a name by Kakapo Recov­ery Pro­gramme offi­cials. Many of the older birds were given Eng­lish names, but more recent chicks have been given Māori names.

A good overview of what is impor­tant for kakapo recov­ery is depicted in this info­graphic, of which a bet­ter view is avail­able at the kakapo recov­ery pages of the Depart­ment of Con­ser­va­tion website:

Hoki

Kakapo Hoki is an extra­or­di­nary spec­i­men con­sid­er­ing the role of Auck­land Zoo in rais­ing her. She hatched on Cod­fish Island (Whenua Hou) in 1992. When, at the age of five weeks, nat­ural food sup­plies failed and Hoki would have starved to death, she was taken from a nest and hand-​raised at Auck­land Zoo, a ‘world’s first’. Hoki became the first kakapo to be par­tially raised in cap­tiv­ity and pro­vided con­ser­va­tion­ists with a spe­cial oppor­tu­nity to get to know the habits and behav­iour of the species.

After about five years Hoki was returned in the wild to Maud Island in the Marl­bor­ough Sounds of New Zealand’s North Island, which was an unlikely haven for the kakapo. This small 320ha island is a patch­work of pas­ture, native for­est and exotic pines. By watch­ing her grow up on Maud Island, staff soon learnt just how intel­li­gent and enter­tain­ing kakapo can be. She used to cre­ate her own amuse­ments, such as spring­ing up and down on branches, and would often play with the zip­pers and but­tons of human cloth­ing. Not unlike what kea, another parrot-​like species of New Zealand, do in the wild – though less play­ful and more destruc­tive. She also gave a good intro­duc­tion to kakapo biol­ogy and devel­op­ment, as staff watched her dur­ing her years in cap­tiv­ity, learn­ing to call and dis­play as she would do in the wild.

Hoki now lives on Cod­fish Island where she has a rep­u­ta­tion as being a bit bad-​tempered with humans – per­haps because she got used to hav­ing things her own way for so long while in captivity.

Hoki has bred two times now, in 2002 and 2009. Unfor­tu­nately in 2002 the embryo died dur­ing incu­ba­tion, while the sec­ond egg in 2009 proved infer­tile. How­ever, both times she was given a fos­tered egg to care for and became a suc­cess­ful fos­ter parent.

Sirocco

Another extra­or­di­nary kakapo is Sirocco. He is the ambas­sador for the Kakapo Recov­ery Pro­gramme, in other words he is New Zealand’s ambas­sador for con­ser­va­tion of native species. Through a relent­less tour­ing sched­ule, Sirocco reaches thou­sands of peo­ple rais­ing aware­ness of the con­ser­va­tion issues that face New Zealan­ders today.

Sirocco suf­fered a res­pi­ra­tory ill­ness at three weeks old while being raised by his mother. When it was dis­cov­ered by rangers dur­ing a rou­tine visit to the nest, it was decided he needed treat­ment. Thus Sirocco became the first male kakapo to be hand-​raised. After he was fit enough again and released in the wild he didn’t want to roam the island. He wanted to stay with humans, being imprinted on this two-​legged mam­mal species. As a result, the Kakapo Recov­ery team realised he was unlikely to be an effec­tive breed­ing bird, but instead an extremely good advo­cate for his species, pro­vid­ing the best oppor­tu­nity for peo­ple to meet a live kakapo.

So, they started tour­ing with him to allow peo­ple to have close encoun­ters with him. Nonethe­less, Sirocco remains a wild bird and does not live in cap­tiv­ity per­ma­nently. But he seemed to thrive on all the atten­tion when tour­ing and doesn’t mind being on dis­play to the pub­lic – a gen­uine ambassador.

As said Sirocco remains a wild bird and when Sirocco’s trans­mit­ter failed in 2016 he couldn’t be found any more. He was last seen on 1 March 2016 and ini­tial search efforts failed to locate him. He was liv­ing with other male kakapo on a predator-​free, densely forested island in Fiord­land. Hence, it was very dif­fi­cult to find him with­out the sig­nals from his trans­mit­ter, but the habi­tat pro­vided plenty of food and there was no dan­ger of preda­tors. There­fore they were not con­cerned for his safety. They con­tin­ued to look for Sirocco and a ded­i­cated search at the begin­ning of 2018 re-​located him. A sub­se­quent assess­ment showed he was still his reg­u­lar, socia­ble self. So, it was decided he could pick up where he left – being the ambas­sador for the Kakapo Recov­ery Pro­gramme. The now 21 year old Sirocco will make his first pub­lic appear­ance since 2014 and will be vis­it­ing Orokonui Eco­sanc­tu­ary in Dunedin from 9 — 29 Sep­tem­ber 2018, Sirocco’s third time here. How­ever, like any super­star, the pub­lic appear­ance will be entirely on his terms. Sirocco’s wel­fare is para­mount so there are strict con­di­tions in place to ensure he’s safe, happy and comfortable.

In the BBC series New Zealand: Earth’s Myth­i­cal Islands, kakapo Ranger Errol Nye gives a true insight into life with a fine feath­ered celebrity. A unique bond and spe­cial friend­ship has devel­oped from an incred­i­ble con­ser­va­tion movement.

Auck­land Zoo

Auck­land Zoo has been and remains a great sup­porter of Kakapo Recov­ery. The New Zealand Cen­tre for Con­ser­va­tion Med­i­cine (NZCCM), which is also Auck­land Zoo Vet Hos­pi­tal, is impor­tant to the research efforts within the Kakapo Recov­ery Pro­gramme regard­ing a num­ber of health issues such as cloaci­tis (‘crusty bum’) and knowl­edge about nat­ural vit­a­min D lev­els in kakapo. The NZCCM team also pro­vides hos­pi­tal care and treat­ment for sick or injured kakapo as and when needed.

In addi­tion to on site ser­vice, mem­bers of the NZCCM team do field work as well. For instance together with rangers from the Depart­ment of Con­ser­va­tion they carry out reg­u­lar health checks in the field, espe­cially check­ing for cloacitis:

And last but not least the Zoo sup­ports kakapo recov­ery through the Auck­land Zoo Con­ser­va­tion Fund.

Zoo details

Loca­tion

Direc­tions

direc­tions to Auck­land Zoo

Auck­land Zoo is located just west of down­town Auck­land and next to the beau­ti­ful West­ern Springs Reserve and close to the Museum of Trans­port and Tech­nol­ogy (MOTAT). MOTAT’s tram net­work pro­vides a link between both attractions.

Address:Motions RoadWest­ern SpringsAuck­land 1022New Zealand

pub­lic transport

by bus

For bus and other pub­lic trans­port options to get to Auck­land Zoo visit the Auck­land Trans­port jour­ney plan­ner. If tak­ing the bus, the clos­est stop is 8124 on Great North Road, oppo­site Motions Road (with a short walk down Motions Road to Auck­land Zoo entrance).

by bicy­cle

As Auck­land is not par­tic­u­larly hilly and the sur­round­ings of the Zoo, west of the cen­tral busi­ness dis­trict, can be regarded as rather flat, you’re look­ing at an easy bicy­cle ride of less than 5 km com­ing from the city cen­tre. And you should have no prob­lem find­ing a rental bike. Find­ing a decent bicy­cle rack near the entrance of the premises is another thing though.

by car

Auck­land Zoo is well sign­posted both east and west­bound on the North West­ern motor­way, use sat­nav or the jour­ney plan­ner (below) to get direc­tions to Auck­land Zoo.